Hey guys! This is my first story published on here in a pretty dang long time… This was just a plot bunny I had while writing my BIG Fillmore! story and it was driving me nuts. So hopefully I can finish that one super soon, 'cause I'm super excited about it. It's gonna be rad!
I almost forgot… Disclaimer: I do not own Fillmore! Dang it.
xXxXx
I sat down on my bed, exhaustion smacking me with a sack full of bricks and I ran over the events of today: the search party the pessimistic side of me predicted would turn up nothing; the missing posters of my sister which had been hung on every vertical structure within a thirty mile diameter of the town and littered my already dark and dismal room.
The town searched all day, all night (it was now five in the morning) and all weekend for X High's missing Einstein-ette prodigy.
Ariella Third was an older version of me. She may not have photographic memory like me, but she was just as smart as and, I won't lie, much more of a socialite than I am.
No. She is. She is, Ingrid. She's okay. She's out there. Somewhere.
I fell back onto my bed, clutching my fists to my chest to force the tears back to where they came from.
At X, everyone took notice of Ariella; her smarts, her beauty, her social skills. Everyone knew and loved her. X High couldn't wait to be the home of her younger sister once I graduated X Middle in a few months.
Four days, thirteen hours and twenty six minutes later, my father, my best friend Cornelius Fillmore, and I are waiting in the bullpen of X's police department, desperately waiting news of Ariella's rescue mission. They told us they had a lead as to where she was and who took her, and they were going to save her.
But one hour and four minutes later, they came to tell us that they got there too late. She was alive, but the damage had been done. Fillmore held my hand as they told us of her condition.
Sold.
Robbed of innocence.
Beaten.
Comatose.
Unstable.
Broken.
And, two days, seven hours and twenty nine minutes later, brain dead.
My sister was gone.
xXxXx
My father and I said nothing to each other as we came home from the funeral and the internment. When we got home, my father retreated to his bedroom and I left him to grieve the loss of his daughter in solitude. Sometimes, that was all that was needed.
Solitude. That sounded nice.
I retreated to my own room, desperate for my photographic memory to vanish, to relieve me of the curse that's haunted me since my birth and save me from the weak, defenseless and broken picture of my sister's body that was forever glued into my brain. I grabbed fresh clothes – black sweats and a baggy gray X Middle School t-shirt – and fled to the bathroom, my only desire being to scrub the stench of death and sorrow from my pale skin.
I unzipped my long sleeved black funeral dress and watched it drop to the floor, and then kicked it towards the trash can in disdain.
I turned on the shower and stood under the shivering cold water which washed my silent tears down the drain along with it.
Suddenly my mind went silent. I didn't think. I didn't know. My mind became paralyzed, overcome with the shadow of grief, and drowned by the overwhelming sensation of despair.
I didn't think. I felt.
I sank to my knees, crushed by the weight of the world, and wept in the bottom of the shower. I mourned for my sister. I mourned for my father. I couldn't bring myself to do much else.
An hour later, I rose and stopped the water and as I stepped out, I wiped the steam from the mirrors, and was shocked at the reflection I was seeing.
The girl I faced wasn't the girl I had become since I had arrived at X two years ago. That girl was healed, saved from a life of delinquency, made whole by the friends that surrounded her and the family who loved her, who she would do anything for.
That girl wasn't there.
The girl I faced now was ugly. A girl I thought I had considered long dead and buried with my past; one who was broken and helpless. She had sunken, red eyes, a frown on her face and a hollowed out heart. The death of her mother had ruined her, and she took it out on the person who was closest to her.
Herself.
Me.
She smothered me; a depression-woven cloth over my mouth and nose, suffocating me with every waking day. I mourned in the worst way possible.
Solitude.
You can't do this again, Ingrid, I told myself as I stared at the memory in the mirror, at the ugly girl taking place of my reflection.
I isolated myself, starving myself of everything required for life; food, light, interaction. When I became unsatisfied, I turned to anything that made someone else bear the weight of my pain, my world. I stole, I planted stink bombs, I broke into buildings; I became a criminal.
But, in the end, I was still unsatisfied.
It doesn't last, Ingrid, I thought.
I refused to be helped. I said I wanted to change. I wanted to feel better, to be healthy, but I couldn't stop. I wanted to be happy, but I sabotaged every chance I had to be so.
I hated myself for it, but I wanted to feel the pain.
I wanted to break. Just so I could feel my body and heart and mind heal. And then Fillmore came. I don't know how, but he helped give me what I needed all along.
A second chance.
He opened my eyes, gave me the chance I needed to truly heal and to see what I was doing to not only myself, but everyone else.
I couldn't go back on everything I now stood for.
And I most definitely couldn't turn my back on my father. He mattered most right now.
The only thing I turned my back on that day was the mirror that held an awful, familiar reflection of a girl I once knew, and swore once again I would never become her again.